Pokemon GO is set to roll out their first Legendary Pokemon in the next few days as part of the ongoing celebration of Pokémon GO’s one-year anniversary.

"We’re excited to reveal that Legendary Pokémon are nearly here!" wrote Niantic on a new blog post.

"Soon, millions of Trainers around the world will be able to discover, battle, and catch these extremely rare and very powerful Pokémon.

"As Trainers around the world go out and explore their neighbourhoods in search of Pokémon and Raid Battles, they can keep an eye out for unique Legendary Eggs appearing at Gyms.

"If Trainers and their team are able to successfully defeat a Legendary Raid Boss, they’ll have the opportunity to catch a Legendary Pokémon of their own!

"While Legendary Pokémon will help them take on the toughest Raid Bosses and Gym Battles, they’re not willing to leave their Trainer’s side, so they can’t be left to defend Gyms."

This all begins on July 22 with the Pokemon GO Fest in Grant Park, Chicago where players will band together to unlock in-game bonuses for the entire Pokémon GO community.

"If they manage to catch enough Pokémon during the Pokémon GO Fest Challenge Windows, the first Legendary Pokémon will be revealed in Grant Park. If the Trainers in Chicago succeed in defeating the Legendary Pokémon, that Pokémon will start appearing in Raid Battles around the world, after Pokémon GO Fest.

"If the Trainers in Chicago succeed in defeating the Legendary Pokémon, that Pokémon will start appearing in Raid Battles around the world, after Pokémon GO Fest."

Pokemon GO: Legendary Pokemon from Gen 1 and Gen 2

POKEMON Go developer Niantic has confirmed plans to release Legendary Pokemon in 2017. Here are the Gen 1 and Gen 2 Legendaries that will be coming soon.

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Pokemon Company

MewTwo - Gen 1

Niantic has also announced that Trainers everywhere can tune in to watch the action taking place in Grant Park live and join in the conversation using the official livestream on Twitch and YouTube.

It's said that the stream will have all the latest news coming out of Pokémon GO Fest including Challenge Window updates, exclusive interviews, and the reveal of the first Legendary Pokémon.

It was highly expected that Legendary Pokemon were on the horizon since Niantic’s new update to Pokemon GO released the other day contained several new details which suggested the game was all set to release this new feature server side.

An APK data mine found that a number of huge new features will be coming to the game very shortly, including exclusive raids and new event check-in mechanics.

The mine also uncovered an attribute for all Pokemon named ‘IsLegendaryOrMythic’ which would allow the game to identify legendary Pokemon that turn up in the app.

In addition, a new check for gym raid bosses named ‘get_IsEventLegendary’ appears to allow the app to identify legendary gym raid events.

Pokemon GO - Legendary Pokemon Raids in the new trailer

The new Pokemon GO trailer is packed with blink and you'll miss it moments, so here's everything we spotted in the new trailer.

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The Silph Road Reddit page also claims to have identified a number of images within the APK which they did not include, but there is apparently a legendary icon of Lugia to mark legendary gym raids, and an all new victory banner to appear above the gym after a raid is complete.

From the sounds of things, the only way you might be able to join these raids is after receiving an exclusive event invitation.

While teased at the end of the trailer it's still unclear if the new Legendary Update will include Mewtwo or Mew, who are both missing from the main raid battles taking place.

The update released in the last few days has also made a number of minor improvements, such as remote berries, Pokemon Go Plus tweaks, health bar fixes, animation fixes and a new sponsor type - info of which can be found further down.

The Silph Road Reddit team have also listed a number of less significant changes to the game, details of which can be found underneath.

Remote Berries!This mechanic was announced officially in the changelog, but the RemoteBerryMultiplier has appeared in the APK. It also appears in the GAME_MASTER, and appears to enable different berries to have different levels of efficacy.

Pokemon GO Plus TweaksNew Pokemon GO Plus states have appeared for the peripheral, including PLUGIN_NOT_READY, INTERNAL_ERROR, NOT_SUPPORTED, NOT_IMPLEMENTED_YET and more. Hopefully these point towards more intelligent (re)connection behaviours - or maybe even eventual new functionality?

Badge ReworkBadges used to be compiled into one giant sprite image. Now, all badges have been broken apart into standalone assets.This hypothetically enables many more badges to be added - perhaps even dynamically, without a client-side update - in the future. Might this be the beginning of badges for accomplishments or events besides GO Fest?

Health Bar Fixes?Code involving the Health Bar has seen some changes - see if you can spot the difference, travelers. Perhaps this may smooth out some of the rubber-banding we see in battle?